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Song of Thunder:
“WARNING! Don't begin to read this book unless you are prepared to read it all, RIGHT NOW! What a marvelous story!”
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“I've just experienced the advent of a brilliant new light in thrillers. I couldn't put this one down. Keith Ellis's new powerhouse read, Song of Thunder will resonate in the reader's mind long after he or she finishes feverishly turning the pages. It's that good. So run, don't walk, to get a copy of this fine book and soon you'll be singing the Song of Thunder!”
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“If you are a fan of thought provoking thrillers this is a MUST READ! The characters display the kind of courage and intelligence that actually leave you feeling GOOD by the end of the story. Do yourself a favor and read this.”
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“A thrill ride! Ellis’s dynamic style pulled me in so quickly that I’d covered 100 pages before I realized how completely I’d become a part of his fast-paced world of adventure.”
AME, Chicago, IL
“This one’s a keeper. It's a real page turner with virtually nonstop action from front to back. A great read! Song of Thunder would make a movie that would put Indiana Jones to shame.”
RJB, Vienna, VA
Song of Thunder
By Keith Ellis
Smashwords Edition
Copyright ©2010 by Keith Ellis
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.
This book is available in paperback from Amazon
under the title: Quantum Ethics.
Cover design by Keith Ellis and Tim Turner
Cover ©2010 by Keith Ellis, all rights reserved.
Cover illustration © Madartists | Dreamstime.com
To contact the author send an email to:
keith(at sign)keithellis.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, which is why we’ve priced the electronic edition so low. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Disclaimer
Song of Thunder is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Helen English Guthrie, Jim Small, Alan Ellis, and Rick Ellis for their help proofreading this manuscript and for their excellent suggestions on ways to improve it. Any shortcomings and mistakes that have made their way into the finished product are entirely mine
For Margie
Chelle, Steph, Katie
and Sadie
Chapter 1
God has no conscience, the old man decided. He sank to his knees and prayed.
His granddaughter had been missing since yesterday morning, just after they set up camp. She was only four and couldn’t wait to begin exploring. He took his eyes off her for no more than a minute or two and she was gone.
“It’s all my fault, Lord,” he explained to the Almighty. “Please don’t take it out on her.”
There was no reply.
Old Tom Krieger had passed the happiest days of his life in these mountains. His father brought him here to hunt and fish when he was a boy. Tom used to bring his own boys here when they were young and full of juice, before the older one stepped on an IED south of Baghdad and the younger one stepped in front of a bus on Wall Street when the mortgage bubble burst. He left behind an alcoholic widow and the most precious little girl on earth.
The new day dawned even colder than the last, clear enough to see the smog over Helena more than a hundred miles away. A front was moving in loaded with the season’s first snowfall, fully a month ahead of schedule. Tom shivered. He couldn’t remember when the cold had come so early to these mountains. They had to find his little girl in the next few hours or it wouldn’t matter anymore.
The search teams were exhausted and chilled to the marrow but they kept going, slogging through the underbrush and stumbling over jagged outcrops of stone that erupted like a nasty rash along the mountainside. He knew they were cursing him for a fool for bringing a little girl into such rough country and letting her wander away. He also knew they were right.
He was as tired as any man on the mountain that morning but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything but the need to find his dead son’s baby girl. Remorse, anguish, guilt—the ghosts he knew would haunt him the rest of his days if he failed—all those were only glimmerings now, crowded from his consciousness by a sense of urgency that gutted him like a blade. He would keep going no matter how long it took to find Sally. If he dropped dead afterward it would only serve him right.
His sunken eyes reddened with tears as he watched wave after wave of searchers report in. All brought the same news they’d been bringing him since yesterday afternoon when the first forest rangers began to arrive: There was no trace of his granddaughter. Not a footprint, not a bent blade of grass, not a lock of hair, nothing. She’d simply vanished from the face of the earth as if her glowing smile had never existed and the laughter that sounded like a chorus of little bells had never warmed an old man’s broken heart. He cradled his head in his hands. He would never be able face her mother again. Or anyone else.
By mid-morning, the storm clouds that were crowding dark and threatening on the horizon began to obscure the sun. Yet another mud-spattered Jeep bounced up the rocky canyon toward the base camp of the searchers, halfway up a mountain in the heart of the wilderness that claimed western Montana. The driver looked like all the other uniformed law enforcement officers who had been swarming over this rugged terrain for a day and a night. But the passenger was different.
He was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt with a medium-weight jacket, like so many of the locals who poured in to help with the search. But he didn’t look like a lumberjack, or a hunter, or a dirt farmer. His face was lean and darkened by the sun. His green eyes sparkled with flecks of gold. They glowed with an uncanny light as if, though intimately familiar with the harshness of the world, they could still gaze in wonder at its beauty. They were astonishingly alert, like the eyes of an animal bred to the wild. His thick, black hair was pulled into a ponytail that gave him an air of dignity, as if he were a young chief of some ancient and noble tribe. His striking features were shadowed by a few days’ growth of heavy beard. But this was no movie star’s trick to look masculine. On him it was real.
When he stepped from the Jeep, even the most casual observer would have been obliged to give him a second glance. He was tall, with broad shoulders, and rock solid, as if he’d been hand hewn from one of these mountains. Perhaps he had once played linebacker in the NFL or won a medal in the Olympics. Or maybe he was just a young god fallen from the sky. Whatever his story, he moved up the hill with the grace and casual strength of a mountain lion. His eyes flashed with preternatural keenness, roaming everywhere and absorbing every detail. His actions were in such perfect harmony with the primal setting that it seemed to claim him as its own, as if he, too, were a force of nature.
The U.S. Marshal who had been driving now walked beside him. A large man in his own right, he appeared insignificant next to the newcomer. Against the backdrop of the wilderness, they were opposites. One of them clearly belonged in this ancient forest. The other just as clearly did not. They made a brief detour to study the ground surrounding what had once been a campfire at the base of a towering pine and then continued up the hill.
They stopped in front of Krieger who stared at them blankly, as if he had forgotten the meaning of either hope or despair. Art Peters, the marshal, cleared his throat. In a voice hoarse from twenty-four hours of shouting for the missing child, he said “Krieger, this is John Thunder. He’s here to help you find your little girl.”
Krieger stared at the newcomer. “Is that an Indian name?” he asked, his voice rising with hope.
Thunder shook his head.
There was a pause as if the old man were waiting for the rest of the story.
Thunder had nothing more to say.
“He’s supposed to be the best damn tracker in the country,” the marshal explained, although it was clear from his tone of voice that he no longer harbored much hope for the child no matter who was here to help. Art Peters knew damn well how cold it was in these mountains come nightfall and he knew that the little girl hadn’t been dressed for the weather. He also knew how good the men were who had been searching nonstop for her the past twenty-four hours. They were experienced hunters and trackers every one, most of them born and raised around here. They knew every nook and cranny of this unforgiving land, every crevice, and they hadn’t found a thing. Not a footprint, not a thread from her clothing. Even the goddamn hound dogs had drawn a blank. The brutal truth was that they might never find the little girl—he’d seen that happen out here—and even if they did, there might not be much left to mourn. He’d seen that, too.
But if the marshal was willing to give up hope, he wasn’t willing to give up the search. He turned to Thunder, pointed back the way they had come and said, “The little girl wandered off from that campfire yesterday morning.” He swept the face of the mountain with his arm. “We dispatched four-man teams to comb every inch in every direction. They went as far out as a mile, then doubled back and traded search areas on the return in case somebody missed something.” He paused and chewed on his lip for a moment. “Then they went out and did it all over again, and then again. They did it all night.” He took off his hat and smoothed back his thinning hair. “Of course, the hounds haven’t been out that far but they’ve run circle after circle around this area and never found a damn thing.”
That last comment seemed to strike Krieger like an arrow in the chest. Lips quivering, he gazed at Thunder. In a thin voice, he asked, “Do you think you can find her?” He stared off toward the top of a ridge where two more search teams were vanishing into the tree line, above which glowered a line of dark clouds. “Before it’s too late?”
Thunder didn’t answer. “Your granddaughter is deaf,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
Krieger nodded.
The marshal stared in disbelief. “She’s what?” he shouted. “We’ve been on this goddamn mountain for a day and a night and you never told us she’s deaf?”
“I don’t think of her that way,” the old man stammered, his sunken eyes somehow drawing deeper into his skull. “I guess I didn’t think it would make any difference.”
“No difference? We’ve been screaming our goddamn lungs out hoping she’d hear us!”
Krieger’s head fell forward until his chin touched his bony chest.
The marshal turned away, disgusted, and kicked savagely at a stone by his feet. He spun back toward the old man. “Do you realize we could be ten yards away from her right now and she’d never even know it?”
“More like a hundred yards,” said Thunder, staring at a clump of bushes up the mountain.
The marshal glared at him, nursing his anger. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Thunder pointed to the bushes, “That’s where I’d go if it started to rain on me.”
The grandfather’s mouth fell open. “It did, Marshal. There was a steady rain for about half an hour right after she disappeared.” He stared at Thunder. “Mister, how’d you know that?”
“If it hadn’t rained, the dogs would have found her,” Thunder replied.
“How the hell’d you know the girl was deaf?” the marshal asked.
Thunder shrugged, “Mr. Krieger hasn’t been yelling like the rest of you. If he had been, he’d be as hoarse as you are, Marshal. He didn’t bother to yell because he knew it wouldn’t do any good.”
The marshal scowled at him for a moment, nodded, and shifted his attention to the spot where Thunder pointed. He cleared his throat and said, “You’re saying she’s hiding in those bushes?”
Thunder shook his head. “No, she’s probably asleep in the cave behind those bushes.”
“Cave?” the grandfather asked. “What cave?” He turned to the marshal. “What’s he talking about?”
But Peters was as clueless as the old man. He turned to say something to Thunder but the tracker simply smiled and began to head up the sharp incline toward the bushes. The other two scrambled after him followed by three state troopers and a forest ranger, all of whom had been on the periphery of the conversation. From time to time Thunder glanced at the ground but never said a word. With long, relaxed strides he approached the bushes, a good twenty yards ahead of the others when he reached there, and then he simply disappeared.
The others stopped in their tracks.
“What the hell?” said Peters, gulping air.
Krieger stepped around the marshal to get a better view. “Where’d he go?” he asked, panting like an old dog, straining his watery eyes at the bushes where Thunder had vanished. “Where is he?”
The marshal shook his head. He turned to the others. “Did anybody see what happened?”
They all shook their heads and stared at the spot as if Thunder had been plucked from the mountain by the hand of God.
Furious, Marshal Peters started after him. He turned to bark an order to one of the men behind him and somebody shouted, “Look!”
The marshal spun around so fast he nearly lost his footing. “I’ll be goddamned!”
Thunder emerged from the bushes. In the crook of his arm, he carried a small bundle of auburn hair and tennis shoes, wrapped loosely in his own jacket.
Krieger scratched and clawed his way up the hill. “My baby,” he cried, “My God, my poor baby!”
In a few strides, Thunder was standing before him. Carefully, he placed the still bundle on the ground.
The old man dropped to his knees. Broken by grief and exhaustion, he stared at the tiny, lifeless form and began to wail.
She opened her eyes. With a pitiful moan, she stretched her arms toward him.
“You’re alive,” he shouted. His eyes flooded with tears. He scooped her from the ground and hugged her with all his might.
“Take it easy,” said Thunder, laying a hand on his shoulder. “She’s pretty fragile.”
The old man relaxed and cradled his granddaughter gently in his arms. They covered each other with kisses and tears.
Thunder turned to the marshal. “If you have a medic, get him up here. She’s suffering from dehydration and exposure.”
The marshal pushed the button on his walkie-talkie and shouted orders to the doctor assigned to the search party.
The growing cluster of people descended the slope. Krieger carried the little girl wrapped snugly in Thunder’s jacket. The doctor met them halfway. The old man laid her on the ground so the doctor could tend to her.
Krieger scrambled to his feet. He used both hands to smudge the tracks of tears from his grimy cheeks. “I don’t know what to say,” he croaked at Thunder. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
His granddaughter started to cry and he bent down to comfort her.
The marshal turned to Thunder, a look mingling suspicion and awe in his haggard eyes. “How did you know where she was? We’ve been searching nonstop for twenty-four hours and you just...you...”
“I noticed two sets of tracks leading out from under that pine tree by the campfire,” Thunder told him. “They pointed up the hill. One set belonged to the little girl. The other belonged to the rabbit she was following.”
“But there weren’t any tracks,” the marshal insisted, “We checked. The rain washed them away.”
“In the open spaces, yes,” said Thunder. “But there were a few traces left under the tree. They pointed in the right direction.”
“What traces?” the marshal growled. “Where?” He coughed and cleared his throat. It felt like he’d been swallowing gravel, from all the yelling he’d been doing. “How come nobody else saw ’em? We had the best trackers in the state up here. Even the goddamn Indians couldn’t find anything.”
Thunder shrugged.
“And how did you know there was a cave up there?” the marshal asked.
“Lay of the land,” Thunder replied. “Bushes grow one way on the side of a hill and another in front of a cave. See where they seem to be growing into the mountain?”
The marshal stared as hard as he could but finally gave up. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said, “but that still doesn’t explain why the dogs couldn’t find her.”
“The air’s flowing into that cave instead of out,” said Thunder. “There must be another opening in the rock toward the rear. The dogs were always upwind of the little girl.”
The marshal chewed on that for awhile, still not satisfied. He gazed uncertainly up the incline. “Those bushes are a hundred yards away. And that’s a steep hill for a little girl to climb. What made you think she headed in that direction?”
Thunder glanced around. “This is pretty open country until you get to that ridge about half a mile away. Children rarely go in a straight line. They tend to wander, unless they’re following something.”
“Like a rabbit.”
Thunder nodded. “It would have been hard for the little girl to make it very far in the open without her grandfather noticing. So the chances were she was somewhere nearby.”
The marshal still wasn’t satisfied. “But how did you know she was up in the cave instead of somewhere else?” He nodded to his left. “Like behind those rocks over there or the blackberry patch we passed on the way up?”
Thunder smiled pleasantly. The marshal had to admit, it wasn’t hard to like the man.
“While we were climbing up from the Jeep, I noticed a couple of rabbits feeding near those bushes. When I saw the tracks under the pine, I figured the little girl probably headed in that direction. And since she was deaf—”
“And how the hell did you know that? I still find that hard to believe.”
Again, Thunder shrugged.
The marshal stared at him, trying to figure him out. “Damndest thing I ever saw. You didn’t really track her, you just kinda guessed where she ought to be.” He stared at the bushes that hid the cave. “And then, by God….” His voice trailed off.
“Your men already did the hard work, Marshal. They knew where she wasn’t. I just had to find out where she was.”
Peters was about to reply when his deputy cut him off.
“There’s a call for you,” the young man said, thrusting forward a satellite phone. The marshal reached for the handset. “Not you, sir,” said the deputy. “It’s for Mr. Thunder.”
The marshal blinked in confusion as the tracker took the phone.
“Thunder,” he said as if this happened to him all the time.
The marshal could tell that the caller got his immediate attention.
Thunder listened intently for a moment. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. “Please return the compliment to the Secretary of Defense.”
Peters and his deputy stared. Their mouths hung open.
“I appreciate that, sir,” Thunder said at last, “but I don’t see how I can help. I’ve never done that kind of work before.”
The voice on the other end of the line must not have liked that answer.
“I understand the seriousness of the situation,” Thunder replied, “but you must have dozens of good people working on this. What can I do that isn’t already being done?”
He listened some more and finally sighed, a sound weighted with resignation. “Yes sir, I can be there in forty-eight hours.”
The reply made him frown.
“Certainly, sir, if you insist. But there’s a front coming in. If you send a helicopter, it’ll have to get here in the next hour or else—”
The voice interrupted him. Thunder glanced toward the southwest horizon where a tiny, dark blot materialized against the translucent sky. “Yes sir, I can see him now. I’ll be there in a few hours, Mr. President.”
He handed the satellite phone back to the astonished deputy.
A Blackhawk helicopter with the markings of the United States Army raced over the tree tops and settled into a clearing a hundred yards away.
Thunder grabbed a small bag and a travel pack from the marshal’s jeep. He bent at the waist, and trotted through the rotor wash toward the chopper.
The search party stared at him through the swirling dust.
The old man shielded his little girl and wiped his eyes.
In moments, the ship was airborne and speeding back toward the horizon.
Hat in hand, the marshal shook his head slowly and asked in wonder, “Who the hell is that guy?”
Chapter 2
The Town Car passed uneventfully through the checkpoint at State Place and curved slowly through the lush grounds until it stopped in front of the West Wing of the White House. Thunder was out and standing on the sidewalk before the driver had a chance to come around and open his door.
Nothing felt right about this. As finely tuned as his instincts were to survival in the wild, he was about to cross a threshold into a different kind of wilderness, a world of customs, compromises, and motives he could never understand. He had seen firsthand how power could warp a man’s sense of right and wrong. He wanted no part of it then and he wanted no part of it now.
He entered the home of the most powerful man on earth looking like someone who’d been chopping wood in the backyard. He was dressed in the same blue jeans and flannel shirt he was wearing when the helicopter snatched him from the hillside out west. He had left his jacket with the little girl.
An armed guard led him inside where another passed him through a metal detector and escorted him stiffly through the corridors. They passed oil paintings of many of the Presidents who led the nation from its past to its present. A few were great men, Thunder realized but most were simply men who held great office, in their own way as unequipped to be here as he was. He felt the enormous gravity of the place, the importance to the nation and to the world of the decisions made by those who lived here on behalf of those who did not. It made him even more uncomfortable.
He was introduced to the President’s executive assistant and took the seat she offered. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stiffen the way they had when he once faced a grizzly inside its den. Like then, it wasn’t fear, it was a warning that he was on someone else’s turf.
The nameplate on the desk across the room read “Mrs. Gail Cooper.” She looked about sixty, he decided, although he suspected she was quite a bit younger. A door opened and two men hurried out, each carrying a portfolio stuffed with papers and folders, their faces straining with importance. Mrs. Cooper stood and motioned for him to follow her into the next room.
The Oval Office.
They stood in front of a large wooden desk behind which sat a distinguished looking gentleman in a crisp white shirt and blue tie. He was Mohammed Shiloh, the President of the United States, or as he liked to introduce himself to the adoring crowds who flocked to see him, the skinny guy with the funny name. He was scribbling on an iPad, oblivious to anyone or anything around him. He appeared as familiar to Thunder as a member of his own family, though the face was more deeply lined than he recalled from the magazine covers and news shows where he had so often seen the image. He looked lean, fit, and ready to lead. Even sitting down he projected an aura of energy and charisma, as if Central Casting had sent up someone to play the Commander-in-Chief.
Not yet two years into the job, Shiloh was one of the youngest men ever elected to the office. He was also the first to reflect such a broad cross section of America’s ethnic diversity. Besides his English ancestry, he was also African-American, Latin-American, and Native-American, not to mention Lebanese on his Mother’s side, thanks to the grandfather for whom he was named. As the President put it, he was his own melting pot.
Thunder remembered the novel way he opened his campaign speeches:
“One of my ancestors came to America on the Mayflower, one of them came in the cargo hold of a slave ship, and one of them was already here when the others arrived.
“My mother was an illegal immigrant from Bolivia, a cleaning lady who managed to earn her citizenship and put three children through college. My father was the son of a sharecropper from West Tennessee and a full-blooded Sioux from South Dakota. He served fourteen years in the United States Marine Corps before he was killed in action in Vietnam.
“Every person in this room has a family with a similar story to tell, full of history, personal hardship, sacrifice, and honor. That’s what makes America the greatest nation on earth.”
People loved it.
The huge desk was empty except for a family picture and an ornate pen holder that was likely a gift from some world leader. There was no In Box, no Out Box, and no paper of any kind. A cord led from the tablet in the President’s lap to the buds in his ears. Thunder could faintly make out the sounds of Miles Davis.
Mrs. Cooper stood patiently while the President completed what he was working on. When he glanced up, she said “Mr. President…”
He pulled the ear buds.
Slowly and clearly, as if she were presenting a head of state, she announced, “May I introduce Mr. John Thunder, the gentleman from—”
Shiloh was on his feet before she could finish. He moved gracefully around the desk in a few powerful strides, like the athlete he still was, and extended his hand. He was nearly as tall as Thunder but a lot thinner.
“John,” he boomed in his famous baritone, “it’s good of you to come so far on such short notice.”
He nodded to Mrs. Cooper who gracefully withdrew. He motioned Thunder toward a settee nearby and seated himself in an armchair facing it.
His smile was warm and expansive, just like on TV.
“Let me get right to the point,” the President said. “I need a favor.”
A curved door opened to admit a short, gaunt man who strolled across the room as if he owned the place. He was dressed like a manikin in a Brooks Brothers window. His flawless silver hair was pushed straight back against his skull, as smooth as an engraving. His tanned skin was stretched so tightly across the bone that he could almost be mistaken for a mummy. Except for those penetrating gray eyes.
Thunder recognized him at once. In one official role or another, he had served each of the previous six presidents. A former fighter pilot who spent five years of his life as a POW in Vietnam, even his enemies had to concede that he was the most experienced man in government, if not always the most popular.
“Lt. Commander Thunder,” said the President, “this is Dr. Seymour Kayne, my National Security Adviser.”
Thunder stood. It felt odd to be introduced by his rank for the first time in, what, eight years?
Kayne reached out a bony hand and Thunder shook it.
“Retired,” said Thunder.
“Beg pardon?” asked Kayne in a raspy voice.
“I’m no longer in the Navy.”
Kayne nodded distractedly. “Of course.” He took a seat and began to pour himself an iced tea from the pitcher on the coffee table.
“Where on earth are my manners?” cried the President. He turned to Thunder, “Would you like something to drink?”
Thunder nodded. He’d forgotten how thirsty he was after the long flight.
Kayne offered him the glass he had just filled, then poured another for the President and one for himself.
Shiloh took a sip, frowned, and settled back into his armchair. His dark eyes fixed on Thunder.
“I asked you here because the Secretary of Defense told me a story that, quite frankly, I find hard to believe. A few years ago he and his newlywed bride went on a camping trip for their honeymoon. Being Kenny Pierce, he headed straight for the wilderness. Being a city girl, Pauline got lost.”
Kayne responded with an artful laugh.
Thunder said nothing.
“Out near Yosemite, wasn’t it?” the President asked.
“Kings Canyon,” Thunder replied.
“That’s the place,” the President said. “I camped there once when I was in the Scouts. Beautiful country but wild.” He waved off the thought. “Anyway, Pierce told me that he and half the population of California were searching for his wife for almost a week without success. Then you came along and found her in a couple of hours. In fact, as I understand it, you even saved her from a mountain lion.”
Thunder nodded.
“How do you explain that?”
Thunder shrugged. “The animal was old and weak.”
The President laughed. “I see, so no big deal, right? He was probably no more dangerous than a housecat. But how do you explain being able to locate Pauline when the National Guard couldn’t do it? Or the Forest Service? Or the guys in the helicopters with their thermal imagers? Pierce told me he brought in the best trackers money could buy from all over the world but none of them did any good.” He leaned closer. “How did you find her when no one else could?”
“Just lucky, sir.”
Kayne gave a snort. “There’s more to it than that, I think.” He slipped on a pair of reading glasses that he extracted from his vest pocket and opened a file folder in his lap. “It says here you were born in the jungle, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Your mother and father were scientists who were there to study chimpanzees.” He cleared his throat and looked at Thunder. “I understand they were murdered by poachers when you were just a boy. I’m sorry.”
Thunder inclined his head slightly.
Kayne continued. “For thirteen years you were with your parents every day, living in the bush, working with the same animals they were working with. You quite literally grew up in the jungle, isn’t that right?”
Thunder nodded.
“Just like Tarzan,” said Kayne.
Thunder’s expression never changed. “There are seven hundred million people living in Africa,” he told the National Security Advisor. “None of them are like Tarzan.”
“Forgive me,” said Kayne, glaring over his glasses. “I was merely trying to suggest that your experience in such a unique environment might have provided you with, shall we say, some special skills.”
The President stepped in. “OK guys, let’s get down to business.” He set his glass on the coffee table. “About a month ago, a very important scientist was kidnapped. We managed to keep it out of the papers but behind the scenes we mobilized everything we had for a manhunt.” He cast an unhappy glance at Kayne. “To make a long story short, we still haven’t found her, despite employing all the resources at the disposal of the United States Government.” He shook his head. “The truth is, we don’t have a clue where she is. We don’t even have a ransom note. She just vanished.” He leaned toward Thunder. “That’s why I called you.”
Thunder started to say something but the President held up a hand. “I know, you don’t think you can help.”
Thunder nodded.
“You’re a tracker, right? Not a detective.”
Again, Thunder nodded. “That’s right, sir. You have the best people in the world looking for this person. I’m just an amateur. The last thing they need is help from somebody like me.”
“Are you kidding?” said Shiloh. “We still can’t find Osama Bin Laden. We need all the help we can get.”
“But sir—”
“You can’t just throw people at a problem like this, Commander. Believe me, we’ve tried. What we need is talent.”
He poured a cup of coffee and offered it to Thunder who politely declined. Shiloh took a sip of the steaming, black liquid and swallowed with a satisfied grimace. He stared into Thunder’s eyes. “The Secretary of Defense says you can track a fish through water without getting wet.”
“No offense, Mr. President, but Kenny Pierce was a computer salesman. They are known to exaggerate.”
The President laughed, which almost became an embarrassment since he was in the process of taking another swallow of coffee. “Point well taken,” he said after he wiped his chin with a linen napkin. “But I trust him, even though I find it hard to believe some of the tall tales he tells about you. And what about that little girl you just found in Montana? Her grandfather thinks you’re some kind of medicine man.”
“Sir, I can track people in the woods okay but it’s entirely different in the city. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
The President held up his hand. “I hear you don’t even need to track people, you can find them just by thinking your way through the problem. That’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
With a clatter, he set his coffee cup on the glass surface of the table. His voice took on a new, no-nonsense tone. He leaned forward, his eyes fixed sternly on Thunder. “John, the bottom line is I need your help.”
Thunder exhaled, resigned to losing the argument. “Certainly, Mr. President. How may I be of service?”
Shiloh visibly relaxed but his tone did not. “I want you to locate a young woman named Cassandra Geemunu,” he said, “and do it as quickly as you can.”
Thunder nodded.
“She’s a computer scientist, a real genius. She’s developed a breakthrough technology that could be of enormous benefit for the United States.”
Thunder saw him cast a quick, nervous glance at Kayne. For the first time the President appeared ill at ease.
“I’d have to say that her gift is beyond genius,” said the National Security Advisor. “She’s only twenty-one but she’s already earned three doctorates from MIT.” He glanced at some notes in his lap. “I’m sorry, make that four—theoretical physics, electrical engineering, photonics, and then some kind of interdisciplinary program that she apparently invented herself. She calls it quantum computational engineering.” He removed his reading glasses. “It would seem that even the professors at MIT can’t keep up with her.”
“Quite the prodigy,” the President said, shifting restlessly.
“Indeed,” nodded Kayne. “When she was seven years old, she accompanied her mother to a parent-teacher conference at school. While the adults were meeting, the little girl wandered into the high-school building next door. She ended up in one of the advanced placement classrooms, the one for math. On the blackboard, the instructor had written a problem and left it for his students to think about overnight. Turns out he meant it as sort of a practical joke. It seems that the world’s finest mathematicians had been trying to solve that particular problem for over three hundred years but nobody could.”
He paused for effect.
“That little girl picked up a piece of chalk and solved it in ten minutes.”
No one uttered a word.
“Thank you, Seymour,” the President said at last. “I think we get the picture. Ms. Geemunu is a whole lot smarter than we are.”
He leaned forward and looked Thunder in the eye. “That’s why we need you to find her. I can’t even begin to tell you how important this is for national security. We’ll give you anything you need. The best people we’ve got, the most advanced equipment, satellite reconnaissance, logistics support, you name it.”
Thunder shook his head. “Thank you, sir, but I work alone. Too many people slow things down.”
“There must be something we can offer you,” the President insisted, “a secretary, a place to work—”
Now it was Thunder’s turn to lean forward. “There is one thing you can do,” he said, his eyes drilling into those of the Commander-in-Chief. “You can tell me the truth.”
A shadow of anger flashed across the face of the President of the United States. But Thunder’s gaze never faltered. The President shifted his weight in the armchair.
“I appreciate your candor,” he said, through clenched teeth. “And I wish I could reciprocate. I really do. But the truth is, this matter is so sensitive that we’ve already told you more than we should.” He paused as if he were waiting for Thunder to take the hint. “Are you willing to cooperate or not?”
Thunder stared into his eyes, expressionless. “It takes two to cooperate, Mr. President. If you can’t tell me why it’s so important to find her then I can’t tell you why she dropped out of sight.”
The President sagged back in his chair as if all the air had suddenly escaped from his body. “Dropped out of sight?” he repeated, staring at Kayne. “What the hell’s he talking about?”
“She didn’t just drop out of sight,” Kayne snapped. “She was kidnapped.”
“How do you know that?” asked Thunder.
Kayne seemed at a loss for words.
“Let me put it differently.” said Thunder, “Did your investigators find any sign of a struggle?”
Kayne hesitated. “No,” he replied.
“Any sign of foul play?”
“No.”
“And I assume there were no strangers hanging around her apartment or her office. No suspicious emails or phone calls. Nothing at all to suggest that she was taken against her will.”
Kayne thought about it and shook his head. “No, there weren’t. How did you know that?”
Thunder ignored the question. “And my guess is that her apartment is shipshape,” he said. “No unfinished meal sitting on the table. No newspapers piling up at the door.”
Kayne waived it off. “That’s true, but her abductors could have taken care of all that just to knock us off the scent. A classic misdirection play. They wanted it to look as if she had taken a vacation or gone to visit relatives because they didn’t want us to know she was missing until it was too late.”
“But you knew it the moment it happened,” said Thunder, “and you checked with her friends and colleagues and found out they knew nothing about a vacation. And then you checked with her relatives and found out that she’s not with any of them.”
“Even so,” said Kayne, “it just doesn’t make any sense. Why would she go into hiding?”
“You tell me.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Without knowing her,” said Thunder, “and without knowing what she was working on, there’s not much more I can say, other than to suggest that she probably disappeared because she grew tired of your surveillance.”
“No one said anything about surveillance.”
“You didn’t have to. If this woman was as important as you say, then you were watching her closely, probably with your best people.”
Kayne didn’t respond. Finally, the President nodded.
“If she was being watched by competent professionals,” said Thunder, “it would have been almost impossible to abduct her without leaving a clue. There would have been some sign of a struggle, some indication that her disappearance was unplanned and unintentional. But you haven’t found a thing. If Geemunu is the genius you say she is then she’s smart enough to figure out she was being watched. And she’s smart enough to hide.”
Shiloh stared hard at Kayne who half smiled at Thunder and said, “Your reputation is well deserved.”
The President was not amused. “Why haven’t we pursued this line of reasoning?”
Kayne cleared his throat. “Actually, sir, we have. We considered the possibility from the very beginning. In fact, at first most of us even agreed with Mr. Thunder. But then we realized how unlikely it was that any amateur would be able to detect our surveillance. Our people are the best in the world at what they do.”
“Give me a break,” said the President. “This kid had a fistful of PhDs before she was old enough to vote. When I was that age I could barely make change for a dollar. Don’t you think it’s possible your people underestimated her?”
“I hardly think that—”
“Why is this woman so important to you?” Thunder asked.
“We already told you that,” said Kayne.
“What technology was she working on?”
“I’m afraid we can’t say,” replied Kayne.
“Then I can’t tell you where she is,” said Thunder. He turned to the President. “Sir, I’ll do everything in my power to help but I won’t do you much good without information.”
The next several moments passed in an uncomfortable silence. In the end it was the President who spoke. “This is way beyond classified, way beyond top secret. Do you understand that?”
“Yes sir,” replied Thunder.
“Do you agree not to divulge any of this to anyone for any reason?”
Kayne started to speak but the President silenced him with a glance.
“Yes sir,” Thunder answered.
“Good,” said Shiloh. He leaned forward. “Because if even one word of this gets out there’s going to be a mass panic that will make the recent economic meltdown seem like Christmas morning.”
For several moments the President stared at the coffee table, clasping and unclasping his hands. “What do you know about quantum computing?” he said at last.
“Not a thing, sir.”
The President sighed. “Neither do I but lately it seems to have become the most important subject on earth.”
He topped off his coffee before he continued.
“Two weeks ago, the launch codes for some of our nuclear missiles were published on a fake Facebook page.”
“I read about that,” said Thunder. “I thought it was a hoax.”
The President managed a tired smile. “That’s what we wanted people to believe. Naturally, we changed the codes the moment we found out they’d been compromised. There was never any danger. But the public might not have seen it that way. So we spun it as a hoax.”
He reached for his coffee and held the cup hovering over the saucer for a moment as if he were lost in thought. He lowered it absently and settled back into his chair.
“A few days later, one of the CIA’s most highly-classified documents appeared on another fake page.”
“The Scorpion Report,” said Thunder. “About the nuclear-arms buildup in China.”
“The unanticipated arms buildup,” Kayne corrected him. “China’s had nukes for decades but they never deployed more than a handful. That all changed after we invaded Iraq. The Chinese got so scared they put their strategic weapons program on the fast track. As part of that effort, they stole some of our most sensitive technology. Robbed us blind. Before we knew it, they had deployed more missiles than we thought they could produce in twenty years.”
“Ten times as many,” said Thunder quoting the report’s conclusion. “The press is calling it Cold War II.”
“Actually, that’s what they’re calling the recent Russian arms buildup,” Kayne deadpanned. “The press doesn’t have a clue what to make of the Chinese. Which is just how the Chinese like it because they don’t want people to hear them coming.”
“Anyway,” frowned the President, “we couldn’t spin our way out of that one. Congress is already investigating the leak as well as the political repercussions of the report.”
“But you don’t think it was a leak,” said Thunder. “You think Geemunu invented some kind of new technology that allowed her to steal the report and the launch codes.”
“And the money,” added the President.
“What money?” Thunder asked.
Kayne glanced at the President who gave him a quick nod.
“Every hour of every day,” Kayne began, “an enormous amount of money changes hands between financial institutions around the world, even in these troubled economic times. The transfers take place electronically, on what are probably the most highly secured networks ever designed. Even we can’t break into them.” His lips compressed over bleached teeth into something that resembled a smile. He took a sip of iced tea.
“The most widely used of these networks is called SwiftNET.” He set his glass on the coaster and dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “Yesterday afternoon, $10 billion was diverted from that network through its member banks into a series of accounts in the Caymans. A few minutes later it all disappeared. Every last penny.”
“What makes you think Geemunu did it?” Thunder asked.
Kayne eyed him as if he were a particularly slow student. “Anyone who can break into the most secure networks the government has could probably break into SwiftNET, wouldn’t you think?”
Thunder ignored the question and the tone. “How do you know she’s the one who hacked into your networks?”
“She is the prime suspect.”
“Why?”
Kayne leaned forward and paused as if for dramatic effect. “We think she may have created the first quantum computer.”
Thunder helped himself to more tea. He took a long, welcome swallow. “How does that make her the prime suspect?”
Kayne began to stroke his cadaverous chin, staring at Thunder as if he were embarrassed for him. “Permit me to explain. A quantum computer, if it’s even possible to build one, would be orders of magnitude more powerful than anything we have today. To break a security code or password is largely a matter of number crunching. If you can throw enough processing horsepower at the problem, you can crack just about anything. Our security systems are designed to prevent that, of course, but they’ve been built with current technology in mind. They wouldn’t stop a quantum computer for a New York second. On the face of it, that shouldn’t be much of a problem because nobody expects a device like that to be built for decades. But if Geemunu has somehow managed to produce one that actually works, years ahead of schedule, our defenses would be helpless against it.”
“You sound skeptical,” said Thunder.
“I am. A conventional computer works by turning on and off voltages in tiny electronic components. It’s easy to understand and easy to build, even a very powerful one.
“A quantum computer is a different kind of animal altogether. It works by manipulating the arcane properties of quantum particles, the fundamental building blocks of the universe. But nobody really knows how to do that yet, at least not in the kind of controlled fashion necessary to build a useful computing device. The most knowledgeable people in the field believe it will take at least twenty to thirty years of intensive research before we can develop a quantum computer that will actually work. Maybe longer.” With a final toss of his hand he added, “Maybe never.”
“You said she was a genius.”
“She’s more than just a genius, Mr. Thunder, she’s a gift from God. She has the kind of intellect you see maybe once or twice in a century. But nobody is that smart. Every scientist I’ve asked about this, and I mean every one, tells me the same thing. To build a quantum computer would require a commitment on the order of the original space program, and probably take twice as long. One person, on her own dime, just couldn’t get it done, no matter how brilliant she is. It’s not like trying to build the first Apple computer in your garage.”
“So she couldn’t afford it?”
“I didn’t say that,” Kayne replied. “She’s got more money than God. While she was still in high school she invented a video codec for cell phones, a lossless compression/decompression algorithm for streaming video. You know, for YouTube and things like that. These days it’s installed on ninety-five percent of all the cell phones in use around the world, and she gets paid for every one of them. The royalties go into a trust fund she set up. She has no shortage of money, believe me, but if she spent any of it we’d know about it.”
“Unless she’s even smarter than you think,” said Thunder. “Or just plain lucky. Either way, she beat the clock.”
“I’m still not convinced of that,” said Kayne. “The odds are overwhelmingly against it. But under the circumstances, I’m willing to concede that our best strategy is to assume she has.”
“And if that’s the case,” said Thunder, “then this thing would give her the power to break into any computer system in the world, is that right?”
“Theoretically,” Kayne answered. “At least any computer with a network connection.”
“So we’re talking about banking systems, communications systems, hospitals, military networks, spy satellites, stock exchanges, everything?”
“Everything,” Kayne replied. “She would have the keys to the kingdom.”
Thunder nodded slowly. He finally understood why they were so desperate to find her. A machine like that could reduce the global economy to a smoking ruin in a matter of seconds. Or it could give any country, or any individual for that matter, what would amount to absolute power.
But something still didn’t make sense. “If this woman is so rich,” he asked, “why would she steal $10 billion more?”
“Because she could,” replied Kayne. “Or because she’s greedy. Or because she’s bored. Who knows? Most crimes are committed for reasons other than money. Anger, power, revenge, the thrill of doing something wrong. Maybe she just wanted to see how much she could get away with using her new toy.”
Thunder studied him for a moment. “You really don’t care about finding her, do you? You just want her machine.”
Kayne rubbed his hands together like a funeral director asking for a check. “National security is more important than the welfare of any individual, Mr. Thunder. I honestly hope that we find Geemunu alive and well. But regardless of what happens to her, we absolutely must locate her computer before someone else does. If such a device exists, it must be in the possession of the United States, or the United States may cease to exist.”
“But we can’t locate it,” said the President, eyeing Kayne. “That’s the problem.” He turned to Thunder. “That’s why we called you.”
“Maybe she took it with her,” said Thunder.
Kayne laughed. The sound was anything but joyful. Or friendly. “She couldn’t take it with her. It would have to be as big as a house. Far too large to hide, at least from us.”
“She must have known that people would come looking for it,” said Thunder. “Maybe she built it with that in mind, in some secret location.”
“Indeed,” said Kayne, “but where? The power supply alone would have to be enormous. Even at idle, the electromagnetic signature would be something our satellites could track halfway around the world.”
“The point is we can’t find the damn thing,” snapped the President. “Or her.” He turned to Thunder. “Can you?”
Thunder stared straight ahead, his eyes unfocused, as if he were listening to another conversation in another place.
The President scowled at him.
Thunder blinked suddenly as if emerging from a trance. “Who else knew what she was doing?” he asked.
“The President’s closest advisers,” said Kayne. “They are the only ones we’ve discussed this with.”
“Understood,” said Thunder. “But before she disappeared, who else knew what she was working on?”
“You mean outside the government?” asked the President. He turned to Kayne. “That’s a good question.”
Kayne uncrossed his legs, again smoothing his trousers. “Geemunu is a scientist,” he began with a casual wave of his hand, “with a scientist’s maddening propensity to share everything she knows.”
“So she told a lot of people about her research?” asked Shiloh.
Kayne nodded in disgust. “Unfortunately, yes. Her theoretical work was common knowledge. Like everyone else her age, she had a blog. That’s how we learned what she was doing. But no one realized that she was actually building the device, not even her closest colleagues. She never posted a word about that. Everyone thought it was just an academic exercise. It was only through extraordinary efforts that we were able to find out just how much progress she was actually making.”
“So she told somebody,” said Thunder, “and you were listening.”
Again Kayne raised an eyebrow. “Perceptive, Mr. Thunder. Yes, she was in the habit of discussing her progress with her mentor, a professor at MIT. Dr. Alfred Nordstrom. Have you heard of him?”
Thunder nodded. The man had just been awarded a Nobel Prize. “So you tapped her phone calls with him?” he said.
“I can’t discuss our methods,” Kayne replied.
“Who else might have known that she was building the device?”
Kayne thought for a moment. “No one,” he replied confidently. “Nordstrom was pledged to secrecy.”
“And did he honor his pledge?”
The President looked as interested in the answer as Thunder.
“Absolutely,” Kayne replied.
“So you tapped his phones, too,” said Thunder.
Kayne regarded him with reptilian eyes. “As I explained, Mr. Thunder, this matter was of the highest importance to national security.”
“Did any of your people let Geemunu know you were interested in her technology?” asked Thunder. “Maybe offer her a job, or a research grant, or something like that?”
Kayne shook his head with emphasis. “Absolutely not. They were under strict orders to have no contact whatsoever with her.”
Thunder was lost in thought for several moments, leaving the others to an awkward silence. Finally, he asked, “Could someone else have tapped her phone without your people knowing it?”
Kayne stared at him, or through him rather, his eyes blinking rapidly.
“Seymour?” the President asked.
“I don’t know,” said Kayne. “Technically, I suppose it’s possible.”
“So someone else might have known how far along she was?”
“Possibly,” Kayne replied. He frowned at Thunder, “But that leads us back to the theory that someone kidnapped her to steal her technology.”
“Or it gave her another reason to drop out of sight,” Thunder replied.
Kayne looked puzzled. “Another reason?”
“Geemunu’s device can break into just about any other computer on the planet, right?”
Kayne nodded.
“Even yours?”
Kayne met his gaze for a moment, and then dropped his eyes to the carpet. He responded with an all but imperceptible shrug.
“Animals know when they’re being watched,” said Thunder, “even human animals. It’s like a sixth sense. The moment she suspected she was under surveillance, all she had to do was to break into the government’s computers to confirm her gut instinct. The FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the DIA, she could have checked them all. Your entire surveillance would have been an open book to her. Your operational plans, situation reports, e-mails, duty rosters, the whole ball of wax. She could have used that information to figure out exactly how to evade your surveillance and disappear. She might even have planted bogus information in your computers, just to mislead you.”
Kayne stared at him. The President stared at Kayne.
“And given that she’s an engineer,” said Thunder, “she could easily have figured out if her phone line was being tapped by one, or two, or half a dozen parties. If there were more than one, then she had that much more compelling a reason to vanish without leaving a trail.”
The room was as silent as space.
“So she was always one step ahead of us,” the President said at last.
Thunder was too diplomatic to touch that one. Instead, he said “There is one more piece of information I need to know. How does it work?”
“You mean her computer?” asked the President.
“Yes sir.”
“Seymour?”
Kayne gazed at Thunder with undisguised hostility. “I don’t see how that will help you find the girl.”
“Humor me.”
The President nodded.
“All right,” replied Kayne, his eyes narrowing. “Among your many accomplishments, Mr. Thunder, by any chance are you a theoretical physicist?”
“No, I’m an Episcopalian.”
The President chuckled.
Kayne didn’t appear to be amused. “Very well then. What specifically would you like to know?”
“Are there any technical problems with designing such a device?” asked Thunder. “Any special requirements?”
“Good God, yes,” replied Kayne. “There are so many hurdles it’s hard to know where to begin. To start with, nobody knows how to build a machine that would allow us to interact with quantum particles in any meaningful way. The science simply doesn’t exist yet. And even if it did, cosmic rays are constantly bombarding the earth from outer space, interacting with quantum particles, which makes them useless for computation. To develop a quantum device that would actually work, you would have to find some way to shield it from cosmic rays, which is almost impossible. Another all-but unsolvable problem is the random fluctuation in—”
“How would you shield a quantum computer against cosmic rays?” asked Thunder.